I’ve noticed sometimes that there’s some half-baked videos or blogs or whatever that purport this or that frugal trick, but if you look at the time or math, it’s not actually frugal for you.
What are some examples of that you’ve come across? The things that “aren’t worth it”?
For me it’s couponing. (Although I haven’t heard people talk about it recently–has it fallen out of “style”, or have businesses caught up to the loopholes folks used to exploit?)
It’s more of a generalized rule but:
Assume that your own time has value.
A lot of “frugal” tips operate off the assumption that you can spend your own time and it doesn’t cost anything. But your time is valuable. Time spent trying to save a few bucks should be considered working time; ask yourself how much you would get paid by your job for the same amount of time. Maybe you enjoy doing whatever the thing is, so it can be considered recreation, but if it’s some difficult or mind numbing slog, then that doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually saved yourself anything, because you weren’t getting paid to do work, and you could have been doing something more rewarding instead.
I feel this way about cooking. I hate cooking. It takes a lot of time. And lots of cleanup time. And time spent planning and shopping. Plus the tools, ingredients, and power/gas/water used all cost money. With all that in mind, a $9 bowl of chipotle is significantly cheaper by my estimation than cooking an equivalent myself.
I’m with you on cooking something like one meal. If I’m going to get out a bunch of stuff in the kitchen and put in that much effort, then I had better be eating for at least a few days off of what I make. Casseroles, stews, big pots of pasta, and holy hell was I excited when I learned how much curry I could make in one big crock pot and then put that on rice for like two weeks’ worth of meals.
I just cook stuff that basically cooks itself. Crockpots, pasta, certain veggies and meats on the oven. After doing them many times I already know the timings for everything so I just put alarms to remind me of turning the fire off/flipping them in the oven once and that’s it. Doing something else in between. Technically speaking you spend only a couple minutes actively cooking for each meal that way. Just don’t forget to set the alarms or it’s burnt (and move the particular meat from the freezer to the fridge the night before)
Then you need to learn how to cook properly, or get more experience. By the time you have driven to and from chipotle, and factor in that time, the cost of gas, the wear and tear on your car. Cooking is significantly cheaper. We only cook from scratch at home, and it rarely takes more than 15 mins to whip up a good meal that tastes better than most things you can buy, even sit down restaurants. When I cook, I clean as I go normally, so clean up aftewards is fast. If you clean up immediately after, clean up is fast. Time spent eating doesn’t count. 20 minutes, McDonalds drive thru takes 20 mins.
Honestly, to me, that would be incredibly fast prep or your meals are pretty simple. Even easy meals I’ve made a million times take me half an hour. Most take one hour to cook and I still feel like I’m rushing around.
Or just used to cooking. My wife makes mostly Indian inspired dishes, which are surprisingly fast to throw together. We do a lot of Asian cooking also. When I regularly make it, I can do pad-thai in 15-20 mins. And some meals are simple but still taste better than take out.
I live somewhere where I have access to dozens of restaurants within a 5 minute drive and I can order ahead to avoid waiting. Cooking really is not an activity I enjoy so I have no interest in practicing unless I have to. That is not to say I never have food at home. I regularly make healthy super smoothies, sandwiches loaded with greens, prepared salads, and whole grain cereals. I wouldn’t consider that cooking though.
I’m not looking to invalidate the experience of anyone who is good at or enjoys cooking. Just sharing my opinion that this is one area that is very commonly recommended for saving money that I personally don’t find worth my time.
Fair point
I’d recommend learning how to cook chicken to that list, just as a handy tool to have.
Not to mention the difference in nutritional quality if home-made food is the staple of one’s diet versus take-out. When you make your own food you can adjust the recipe to your own taste so that it tastes good without over-reliance on salt, saturated fats, and other hyper-processed ingredients (which is what’s used to make take-out food taste appealing)
I hate how judgemental people are about food.
The scary thing is, food is directly connected to a person’s ability to live. So when you get in there psychologically and root around, spreading shame and judgement, it might actually stick with someone. It might actually be just ONE more little straw on the camel’s back to break it. Because food is so directly and intimately connected to a person’s physical ability to be healthy, it might very well cascade into something bigger than you ever anticipated.
Especially with all of society yelling their own version of it. And family.
I really, really wish people would shut the hell up about other people’s food habits. It doesn’t really cost YOU anything, but it might actually make life easier on THEM.
I wasn’t trying to be judgemental,but I understand what I said that made it come off that way. That was not my intent. Typing too fast and not thinking about what I said. The point I was trying to make was that you can whip up delicious food at home in the same amount of time it takes to run out and buy fast food. I totally understand I worded it badly in the beginning.
I would not habe worked in that time. I would have sat on the sofa and watched something on Netflix that I do not care about.
It is not a crime to be unproductive. In fact, we all need to be unproductive occasionally.
That may be a more valuable use of your time, for life satisfaction or mental health
Businesses have caught up and fixed the exploits.
For me, it’s dried beans. Beans are an excellent source of protein and fiber, and it doesn’t get much cheaper per serving than bulk dried beans.
But rinsing, soaking over night, and then boiling, only to end up with way more beans than we will consume, and canned beans are almost as good and almost as cheap.
We use a pressure cooker for our dried beans. 20-40 minutes depending on the bean. You don’t have to soak them overnight when using a pressure cooker. I ensure that each batch we make is consumed within five days.
Canned beans are considerably more expensive based on the amount we eat.
If you only eat a can here and there, it’s probably not worth making them from dry.
I’ve found pressure cookers are the only way I can get beans tender. (I’m not a great cook.)
Get the beans and water to a boil, then turn down the heat until it’s just simmering.
Simmer for 1 hour, then taste test. Most dried beans will be tender, but some dried beans that have been sitting on the shelf for a long time might take up to 1 more hour of simmering, for a total of 2 hours.
I’ve never had dried beans take more than 2 hours of simmering to tenderize.
Dried lentils take much less time, usually about 45 minutes.
Pour off all the water and rinse the beans until the water runs clean. The bean simmering water contains much of the indigestible sugars that make you fart after you eat beans.
Now the beans are ready to make soups and chili or however you want to use them.
But yeah, 20-40 minutes in a pressure cooker is a lot faster.
Dried beans are a huge win for me (with a pressure cooker) because they’re cheaper and tastier… but the biggest thing is that they’re really easy to get in bulk and store. Canned beans are HEAVY and if you walk / bike / take transit to get groceries that can be a big deal too.
Probably not frugal, but instant pot changed my life, in regards to soaking beans. What a time/effort saver.
Can you share your technique? I have a giant bag of black beans and I always reach for a can instead because it’s such a hassle.
Pour em in the pot, fill with water about an inch over the top of the beans. 40 mins, and pull em, or 30 mins with 15 min natural release (recommended, but I almost never do it).
That sounds very easy. I’ll give it a try, thanks!
This is why I go with lentils. They don’t require that lengthy soak so it doesn’t take much more time to make a serving of lentils than a serving of rice.
Soaking and cooking too many beans? That’s just like opening a big can of beans when a small one would suffice.
Agreed. I only keep dried puy lentils and adzuki beans. White beans, kidney beans, garbanzo… nah fuck that.
And even then, I’m making a batch and freezing half.
Also: fuck broad beans entirely. I have no room for that double shelling nonsense.
Get an eletric pressure cooker and you can get it from the pack to ready to eat in an hour at most. With a little confidence you can even use most of that time for other stuff.
You don’t need to soak beans lol why do people always say this? Never have I ever soaked beans before boiling them.
Searching for the cheapest gas station. Too much time and gas.
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In Australia there are apps that show cheapest prices near you, so at least there’s not too much time and effort involved.
Ah good. Sorry. I’m traumatized by parents driving obsessively around for hours looking for best prices on things…obviously there are better ways now.
There was a trick with the Caltex app where you can do a price lock and then get the fuel from any other Caltex station
What people would do is find the cheapest fuel in the country, use a fake GPS app to make the app think you are close by and lock in the price, then go to their local servo and use the locked in price. Saving 15/20c per litre.
Growing up, that was my mom. She’d circle the parking lot for 15 minutes searching for the perfect spot, then if she saw someone come out to their car would post up right behind them for an uncomfortably long time waiting for them to leave.
I used to hate it so much
We have gasbuddy in the USA. You don’t even need their app (though they have one).
Yep my wife will drive 8 miles to Costco…if you’re going anyway it might be fine. But 16 miles at 22 mpg with $4 gas means it costs $2.80 drive there and back. Saving 8 cents a gallon would be $1.28 in a 16 gallon tank.
I buy gas at the station 1/4 mile from our house…I don’t look at the price. It’s always reasonable.
Flights with connections. Flying has become so tedious, frustrating, stressful, that saving money by spending yet more hours dealing with it, just isn’t worth it. I’d sooner cancel the trip
I saved $500 per ticket on an international flight for my girlfriend and I and the extra connection should have only added a few hours to the trip.
Then they cancelled my flight, and I got stranded in another country (Canada), spent over 10 hours in the airport getting a new flight, lost two days of the trip, which were the best days, lost the money I paid for the hotel for those days, and I only get a few days off a year and that was how I spent several of them.
The Europeans and Canadians on the flight got their flight comped. Being an American, I had to fight for a meal ticket that didn’t even cover the cost of two sodas. This was pre-pandemic too.
Oof 😭
I disagree because you can save so much money. But my limit is one short stop, unless I am flying to the other side of the world and need a few days’ break.
I’ve only had a flight delayed once on a layover, it was a few hours but meant getting home at 3 am instead of 11 pm and was fucking miserable. I can’t even imagine if it was 5-10 hours or a day. For a family of four we could probably save $400 on round trip cross country (USA) but I would rather pay and have a direct flight. And the shitty discount airlines are not worth a bloodclot in my leg when I can’t bend them for 3.5 hours…even an inch of extra room can make a difference when it’s almost 4 hours in a tin can.
Cutting sponges in half. It just makes them harder to use, and then already last a long time and cost like $1 each. I’m not going out of my way to save ~$1/month.
Unplugging electronics. I have a kill-a-watt meter and did some math. It took more power for my computer to run the spreadsheet than I’d save by unplugging everything in my house. Electronics have gotten way better at managing phantom power draw.
And I’ll second coupons. The only coupons I look at is the monthly Costco mailer, and I only really look at things I’ll buy in bulk. I try to buy enough to last until the next sale, which has worked out pretty well so far. But I literally don’t look at any other grocery store coupons because I just don’t find much value there.
In fact, most of these frugal “tricks” are worthless. Just focus on the high value lifestyle choices (cooking at home instead of prepared meals, learning to DIY common repairs, etc), and ignore most of penny pinching. In other words, don’t be penny wise and pound foolish.
That said, here are a couple of things that I do think are worthwhile even if the money savings isn’t huge:
- cut my own hair - takes 15-20 min once a month, which is less time than I’d spend getting to and from the barber; it’s essentially free ($20-30 for clippers, which I’ve used for dozens of hair cuts), but $20/month saved isn’t why I do it, I just hate going to the barber, it just seems to take so much time
- change my car’s oil - same as hair, it takes ~30 min, and most of that time I’m just sitting inside waiting for oil to drain; I don’t save much money, but I do feel like I save time vs driving to/from the oil change place, and I use high equality OEM filters
Never ever follow a cutting your own hair advice.
Unless you’re bald, then it’s the greatest one
im a baldo - it’s the only benefit. I’ve spent ~$100 on clippers over the last 20 years. Being bald will enable me to retire like one day early, so it’s been worth it overall.
Now I wish I was bald.
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My mom was a stylist. She showed me all the tricks, so I can do skin fades and the like. The back gets tricky sometimes, so I’m glad mullets are currently trendy.
Yeah, this response is pedantic as fuck but y’all can’t make blanket statements like that!
Me and my wife cut each others hair, it works well and we both get compliments on it … but yeah, I can imagine there’s a lot of people out there who couldn’t pull it off
Why not? If you’re fine with a simple haircut, it’s really quite practical. I’m a guy and do a simple taper fade from 1" on top to 1/4" on bottom (similar to this).
My brother did it for years and he got to a VP level role at a large insurance company. If he did a bad job, there’s no way he would’ve gotten that kind of role because it’s as much about personal presentation as it is about competency.
I have my wife check it each time, but I don’t have her do it because I think I do a better job.
I’m a guy and do a simple taper fade from 1" on top to 1/4" on bottom
Same here, but a bit shorter than in the picture. I haven’t been to a hairdresser for at least 35 years.
Yup, mine is shorter on top and a little longer on bottom. I’ve never been a hairdresser, but my mom always did my hair and taught me, and I’ve had hairdresser friends.
The only time I’ll get mine done is if it’s a friend, otherwise it’s a waste of time and money for me. Yeah, a hairdresser is faster than me, but not with transportation to their shop, and the quality difference isn’t high enough to matter for me (I don’t care about my hairstyle, as long as it’s presentable).
Speak for yourself. I have long curly hair and if it’s all irregular, no one can tell. Every time I wash my hair it curls differently anyway.
Growing your own food. The only way to make that shit pay is to groom a cult to do it for you, large-scale.
The only way to make that shit pay is to groom a cult to do it for you, large-scale.
They’re called grand parents
Oh, I see somebody cracked the code.
I still buy the vast majority of my own food, but:
I’ve been eating the same $0.99 bell pepper going on three years now.
A $3 packet of jalapeno seeds has made a year’s worth of taco tuesdays.
I’ll never buy Mint again; I couldn’t get rid of my patch of peppermint if I wanted to.
I can grow much better tomatoes than what you’ll find at the local mega mart.
A $3 packet of okra seeds will thicken a year’s worth of gumbo.
My little vegetable garden, which is smaller than my living room, yields somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds of produce every year.
Respect for that - I was mostly trying to be funny with my post, I have to admit. If you have a good patch of garden, with good soil and conditions, I guess that can pay financially, and for sure psychologically. But if you have none of that… I have eaten too many shitty tomatoes grown on friends’ and neighbors’ balconies to be kind towards that anymore.
Growing your own greens and herbs is super easy with a hydroponic setup, but obviously you have to invest the time into getting it set up. There are a lot of pre-made options available these days, though, so it’s not as much work as it used to be even just a few years back. Saves me a lot of trips to the grocery store.
The only thing I’ve successfully grown is tomatoes. And they tasted weird.
This is a little different from the others on this list, but a lot of DIY stuff for parties/weddings. The money you’re saving is negated by time lost, not to mention unless you have unlimited time/ no job and are able to thrift everything, the components for DIY aren’t that inexpensive. For my sister’s wedding, we did everything ourselves. Everything from literally painting the venue, collecting/creating every table scape, my dad built the stage and dance floor, all the way through setting up the hundreds of little desserts on the day of. It was all wonderful and lovely. And took a massive amount of time and labor across several families. When you factor in the value of people’s time, it was not less expensive than mine. We rented everything and it was so nice not to stress about dressing every corner of the room or decorating the bar, or making sure we didn’t run out of ice on the day of. We still chose super frugal options because the wedding industry is a scam, but we just paid for everything.
Sometimes it’s worth it just to pay people to do stuff. Value your time and mental health more than money.
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Well, presumably you also cleaned up and had some time together…
And interacted with neighbours and enabled a culture of reusing stuff that may have been thrown out otherwise.
You can donate stuff for free for the latter without wasting a ton of time.
That’s a good one, yeah, I have stuff to get rid of and some of it ought to be useful to somebody, but I just can’t see how it’s worth my time to hold a garage sale. All that time and dealing with people, just to get a buck or two for a few things, and still have to throw out the rest. It’s just not worth it
The cheapest option is always cheapest for a reason. Incrementally so the amount cheaper it is than the average.
Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cheaper for a bad reason though. There are often instances where the cheaper option can also be the better option.
Exactly. That simple can opener with a crank will outlast that fancy electronic one and probably be less effort to use. Sometimes simpler and cheaper really is better.
But often cheaper is just crap.
Those are different things though. The comparison is your trusted brand quality metal can opener with a crank vs the quarter of the price in genuine chinesium.
Yeah, they are different things, but they accomplish exactly the same goal. In fact, a simple chinesium can opener (crank or even no moving parts) could outperform a fancy automatic one in the areas you’re most concerned with (perhaps durability).
To me, frugality is more than just finding a low price on something, it’s about solving a need in the most price-efficient way. So I’ll compare based on need, not features.
Sure, but then the comparison also becomes pointless. That my shoes are cheaper than a used bicycle or a fully equipped modern car says nothing about either.
Frugality isn’t about individual products, but about lifestyle and needs.
Product X isn’t always better or worse than product Y, it’s all relative to your needs. For example, if I’m on vacation, I’ll buy the single use can opener from the dollar store instead of a nicer one that could last years. But if I’m at home, I’ll buy something that lasts a lot longer. Maybe you’d pick X in one scenario and Y in another.
As for shoes vs bike vs car, here’s a concrete example. I used to work about 10 miles away, and the company was located right next to a bike path that connects near to my house. My options were:
- bus + nicer pair of shoes - bus was ~mile from my house, and dropped me off right next to work - total trip time ~1 hour (20 min to the stop, 40min on the bus due to a transfer), a bit more in the winter (we get lots of snow)
- bicycle - 40-60 min year round (ride to the bus in the winter); cost $500-600 (dependable and has rack mounts)
- car - 20-40 min year round, depending on traffic and road conditions
Average costs over 5-ish years:
- walking - $100 for shoes + $4/day (no annual pass options; 250 days/year) for the bus = $1100
- bicycle - $600 for bicycle, $30/year maintenance (two chains/year, one cassette over 5 years), ~$50/year bus fare = ~$1000
- car - will have one regardless (need for road trips), so my estimate is something like $0.25/mile in extra costs beyond the insurance and registration I’ll pay anyway; so that’s ~$1k per year
So cycling and walking+bus are about the same price, and I can use the bicycle for trips to the store and whatnot, so I went for the bicycle.
If my commute was longer, the bicycle would be impractical unless there was a good train line or something. If I lived closer to work (say, 1-2 miles), I’d just walk. But for that situation, the bicycle was the cheapest long term option that met my needs.
I don’t know if you’re missing the point of the original advice on purpose or if you’re just in it for some sake of a social circle frugality. Regardless, please let me take advice from your verbosity and make it absolutely clear with my intention.
The point of the original post was that the money you save buying the cheapest alternative of the comparable range of product you have isolated as an appropriate solution for your predicament is likely a bad investment, for if it is priced way below the median - without being on a fire sale or some other reasonable circumstance - the shaving off the price must be in the production, be it in quality of said product or exploitation of producers, as there is always a price down the line, be it monetary from your own pocket for an early replacement product, or the collective cost of making life a little bit worse for somebody else on the other side of the globe. Agreed, the latter may or may not be of consequence for the subject.
The point in the follow up addresses that if you compare single instances relativistically across classes, you have no frame of reference if any of your selected candidates are of preferred cost/quality as there is no singular frame of reference. This implies a preliminary step of filtration of the range of products to compare, the very one that you’re showing through an example.
My advice is regarding the step following the iterative process of analysis and selection. That is, we’ve compared either shoes, bicycle, car, bus ticket, hitch hiking or levitation and have decided that the class of shoes will do the trick.
We now need to assemble a selection of candidates from our previously decided class of solution. And to complicate even more, shoes as well come in different types and ranges! A pair of hiking boots? Genuine Italian leather shoes? A pair of flip flops? Can we already apply the rule of thumb to not trust the cheapest option? Oh, let us not be hasty. Flip flops may well serve our needs, should we have good feet and our commute is short and vacant and we reside in a hot climate. If, though, we live in norse climate, other types of shoes may be more appropriate to trod through snow and water and ice and general grimness. I’ll leave it for the imagination to decide the subclass of shoes to be decided upon, personal preferences and all that, which shall not hinder the flow of this narrative.
It is now and only at this stage, now when we have already narrowed down from class to subclass to segment and subsegment and filtered out marked up brands and price ranges that are beyond our scope. Now that we have a handful of viable items of which we shall decide upon one pair of actual physical shoes we shall wear for this season and hopefully many more to come, it is now and only now that we can apply this final filter.
Our hypothetical selection has one pair of a highly reputable brand that are nearly four hundred money, but are whispered in the shadows to last a lifetime if not many. The middle section of a hundred to two hundred money a pair of branded shoes that all seem fair, and in the bottom end that one pair that caught our eye that are fifty money at full price with a brand name we’ve never seen before and can not find a single hint that they might be a snazzy eco friendly high ergonomy fair trade product that is breaking in on the market at a provocatively disruptive price point. Unfortunately, they are but an unknown pair of footwear at a tempting low price.
It is at this point we can apply the wisdom I wish to bring forth.
If the median is somewhere around one hundred and fifty money for a pair of shoes that fill our preset requirements, my words are that it is recommended to take in consideration why the price of both these outlier shoes are at such difference from the others in our list, and to make an informed decision based upon parameters other than the numbers on the price tag, for it may well be a deception with the savings of the lowest immediate cost as the difference may well present also the difference in quality, and likewise the expense for the top end may keep our feet dry and comfy for winters upon generations to come.
Yes, it is here that I wish to inject these words to remember.
What is cheapest, is always the cheapest for a reason. There is always a reason. Always. And in a market economy it’s rarely a good reason, except maybe in the short term for the monetary receiving end of the transaction. There may be the rare exception, but it will never be a bad advice to consider it for whatever purchase you make that is of some hint of significance.
Sometimes items may be a loss leader and sold as a motivator…getting cheap shit in Vegas but not gambling, for example. Sometimes Black Friday products are inferior models…sure…but sometimes they lose money to make money elsewhere and you can be smart to use it 😊
The cheapest food is always a massive rip off. It doesn’t matter if you’re willing to settle for something that doesn’t taste as good. The cheapest food has been stripped down to such nothingness that you need to eat 3x more to stay alive. It doesn’t work for the same reason you can’t just drink water and feel full.
Depends on what kind of food you’re talking about. Whole foods like potatoes, lentils and beans are filling, nutritious and inexpensive. Cheap processed foods frozen pizza are basically edible polyester.
I’m not talking about frozen pizza. I bought the cheapest bagels a few times, and they skimp on them so hard they’re like Sonic rings, and I had to eat two or three at a time. But they’re not half the price. So despite being cheaper, the daily bagel expense is higher than if I buy real ones.
So you’re saying that the cheapest example of a given food is not necessarily a good value? Makes sense.
I always thought couponing looked obnoxious.
Using things outside of their intended purposes. I live in a gated community with my folks. Our house borders an apartment complex community, the border is a fence followed by a hedge in our backyard. We have several fruit trees in our backyard including avocados and mangoes. During fruiting season, avocados will drop and fall over the fence. My mom uses a pvc pipe with a kitchen knife taped to one end to use as a spear to retrieve avocados over the fence on the other community’s side. 5+ kitchen knives have been broken by doing this. I recently bought a 30ft fruit picker to collect fruit before they drop, so hopefully that helps to alleviate the problem.
DOCAZOO DocaPole 7-30 Foot (30 ft Reach) Fruit Picker and Telescopic Extension Pole for Apples, Avocados, Oranges, and Other Fruit Trees https://a.co/d/hZUlhHK
frugal
> cant ask neighbors to come in and pick their avocados
> uses spears insteadno, that’s not frugality, those are signs of mental ineptitude
I should have clarified. She wants to retrieve her avocados that have fallen over the other community’s side.
Here’s a picture of the fence and hedge.
Here’s a picture of our tree.
